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Polio will not be eradicated this year

AS POLIO re-enters the Indonesian capital Jakarta, and the World Health Organization admits it will not eradicate the disease this year, a more subtle problem has cropped up in Slovakia.

The location seems unlikely. Slovakia’s last polio case was in 1960, and 97 per cent of Slovaks are vaccinated against the disease. But therein lies the problem. The normal vaccine contains live, weakened polio virus, which vaccinated people excrete in their faeces. It can theoretically persist in sewers, where it may revert to the pathogenic form.

This only happens rarely. But this week in the European disease bulletin Eurosurveillance, …